Prologue

I prostrate to glorious Samantabhadra.

From the ocean of the glorious two accumulations come clouds that bear an abundant rain of peace and happiness, the hundreds of natural qualities that constitute the beauties of the three buddha bodies.

The thunder of wisdom and kindness, the great drum of Brahma, rolls, pervading the limits of space.

To the omniscient principal one of beings,^[1] to the Dharma, and Sangha, the leaders of beings, I bow.

On an island in a lake of Uddiyana,
Born within the blossom of a lotus stalk,
Spontaneous emanation of the victorious ones,
Blazing with all the qualities of the major and minor marks:
Padmasambhava protects the lotus lake of my mind.

To the primordial stainless light from which stream forth samsara and nirvana;
To the unborn nondual nature, the essence, the way things are that is perfect buddhahood.
To that without existence and nonexistence, without any views of eternalism or nihilism, and with
             neither coming nor going,
To that which is not an object of complex conceptions of variety,
To that without notions of good and evil, that neither accepts nor rejects,
To uncompounded mind itself I bow.

In order to bring all beings to the unsurpassable city of joyous liberation, where the victorious ones of the three times attained supreme peace, I summarized the essential meaning of the sutras and tantras. Day and night, I applied my mind to that with 116 unremitting effort and single-minded devotion. May this Great Chariot of the profound path that liberates from samsara clearly explain that meaning.

This explanation of Great Perfection: The Nature of Mind, Easer of Weariness, the single path of all teachings and traditions, has three main sections:

1. the manner of my entering into the composition of the treatise and the introductory section
2. the extensive explanation of the main subject of the text
3. the conclusion

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

the Buddha.